The h Bar

@0celo7 That's a lot of books I don't have and have not read!

@Slereah dude we can do it

why read them

just make shit up

11:14 PM

Can't be that hard

They all have the same titles

"Einstein in Matrix Form"

It's always some variation on "spacetime", "geometry", "gravitation", "Einstein" and "General relativity"

Hmm...

Yeah, pretty much.

"The Mathematical Theory of Black Holes" HA

I own two GR books

One is "The geometry of spacetime"

The other is "Spacetime and geometry"

Wald?

HE?

Straumann?

11:17 PM

One is Carroll

Visser?

The other is Callahan

I know which ones they are

Do you

I can never remember myself

You have more than 2 GR books

11:18 PM

Yes

But I am using these as humorous examples

Of samey titles

I own 2 GR books

"General Relativity"

and

I own 99 GR books but a bitch ain't one

"General Relativity"

yeah that happens a lot too

I own some math books

11:19 PM

Well, when physicists try to be creative you get stuff like "quarks" sooooo maybe good they didn't try there :P

"Differential Geometry"

and

"Differential Geometry"

but then

Well the problem is that they all try to write the same book

"Manifolds and Differential Geometry"

They all try to write the Definitive Textbook on GR

Then some German put a spin on it: "Riemannian Geometry"

11:20 PM

in Mathematics, 1 min ago, by Danu

So, apparently nature prefers prime knots.

If you can't improve on Wald I say go home

@Slereah Maybe they hope the series of books will eventually converge to the perfect GR book ;)

@Slereah So nobody has to go home ;)

@Danu Well there's plenty of room to improve

what?

11:21 PM

But

You have to actually do it

my internet just died

Straumann ain't too bad either

Straumann is missing all of the topology stuff

Yeah but most GR books do

But I'm not convinced that's physics

I haven't seen an open set in the night sky!

11:22 PM

It's really just HE and Wald that care about it

Uh, and Penrose, BEE

Didn't read BEE

CB, and some others

Oh right

Penrose I'm not sure I would call a classic tho

There's a whole book on topological obstructions in the Cauchy problem

11:24 PM

I like it but I had to go pretty far to see it referenced somewhere

@ACuriousMind Can we make a resource rec post that doesn't have an explanation for every book

I don't even remember where I heard of that book

Probably in HE

Yeah

I think it's in the back of Carroll?

@Danu I would star that, but starring quotes is ugly.

Sachs and Wu is really obscure

11:25 PM

@0celo7 I neither understand the question nor why you are asking me.

Actually BEE is the most obscure because it's not a GR book

Much like HE Penrose is one of those graveyards of proofs

Where the proofs lie buried, never to live again

We just reference them once in a while

No one has proved the Geroch splitting theorem since 1973

Probably

@ACuriousMind So apparently, nature prefers prime knots.

11:26 PM

What's the significance of that?

Nobody has proved the method of computing Mathieu function since the nineteenth century

@ACuriousMind you know things like that

To answer your question: No, you shouldn't, 0celo7

@Danu How long does the explanation have to be

Whatever: Just don't be lazy :)

11:27 PM

Is like "Visser: wormholes and energy conditions, etc." good enough

Definitely not.

It has to be useful. This isn't a school assignment with some set amount of words.

I will never understand how you find these things interesting @0celo7

@FenderLesPaul huh?

@0celo7 mathematical GR

11:29 PM

@FenderLesPaul what do you mean

@0celo7 I mean, I don't understand how one finds mathematical GR interesting :D

He means that it's boring

What is?

What do you consider "mathematical GR"

all the things you mentioned in like the past hour

wtf did I mention

11:31 PM

"Geroch Splitting Theorem"

"BEE"

@FenderLesPaul Umm, that's just the statement that $M\cong \mathbb{R}\times \Sigma$, $\Sigma$ a Cauchy surface, if $M$ is glob. hyp.

other stuff

@FenderLesPaul You don't find the bees and the flowers interesting? ;)

@ACuriousMind booo

@0celo7 yeah but like

who cares

No one, hence why I'd never be foolish enough to (try to) make a career out of it.

11:32 PM

know 'm saying

@FenderLesPaul I can't help myself, very bad puns delight me :D

@ACuriousMind bad puns are definitely very fun I'll give you that :D

@FenderLesPaul Do you think straight Riemannian geometry is boring too?

@0celo7 well yes but I find pure math boring in general, that's just me

apart from solving actual math problems

I'm starting to find theoretical physics boring. It's either pure math or useful physics that's interesting.

11:34 PM

which is really fun

but it's fun because it's a great mental exercise rather than due to the actual material involved

for me anyways

@ACuriousMind Hmm. How long does the reason for "useful" have to be?

the is pure math which I find beautiful, but all the stuff 0celo7 usually discusses is not among it :P

Can I recommend a book because of just one or two pages?

There's a guy in my group who wants to do mathematical GR

@ACuriousMind Category theory is just dumb, and I'm not smart enough to do the other stuff.

11:36 PM

@0celo7 What about "This isn't a school assignment with some set amount of words." do you not understand? If you manage to pack substantial information in a single sentence, good for you! If you need several paragraphs, so be it!

the kind of stuff that Princeton people like Dafermos do

not Wald type GR research

anyways, he's having a really hard time getting a post-doc

cuz no one seems to give a shit about mathematical GR

I have a strong feeling my advisor wanted to do mathematical GR but no one wanted that so he went with Riemannian/geometric analysis.

He has way too many physics books on his shelves for a pure geometer.

All the non-algebraic geometers here have some interest in physics, it's not uncommon

@0celo7 That's what my analysis professor did too

@ACuriousMind Yeah, but this guy did a post-doc at the Max Planck gravity place, I think.

11:40 PM

Honestly there are some cool problems in GR that I would like to explore

but spending grant money on stability of higher dimensional black holes/branes seems a bit gratuitous

Do you understand stability in 4 dimensions?

Me personally?

Depending on how much PDE I can do before my senior year, I'll look at black hole stability for my thesis

@FenderLesPaul It seems like a really mathy thing

The book on the proof of stability of Minkowski spacetime is fucking horrendous

@0celo7 it typically is but there are also physicists working on stability problems from a more physicsy orientation

where the things they're trying to answer are far more motivated by physics

like

arxiv.org/pdf/1201.0463v4.pdf

@ACuriousMind What pure math do you like

Besides category theory, which is dumb

11:44 PM

PhD level set theory

@FenderLesPaul Is it just me or are there more mathy GR people in Europe/S America

and also arxiv.org/pdf/1208.5772.pdf

@0celo7 Algebraic topology, ring theory, category theory, group and representation theory

@0celo7 that's definitely true

I've noticed it

11:45 PM

@ACuriousMind Ring theory?

In the US there are very few relativists (like actual relativists, not LQG or quantum gravity people)

Doing rings in algebra right now, pretty boring.

off the top of my head I can only name like 4 theorists in relativity

in the US

@0celo7 What you'll usually find labelled as just "abstract algebra"

@FenderLesPaul I think all the ones that are still alive are old.

11:45 PM

most of the GR-QC papers are from Europe or South America

@FenderLesPaul Hmm

Rings 'n' modules 'n' shit

Wald, Horowitz, Geroch

I think as far as gravity theory goes in the US it's mainly string theory and gauge/gravity stuff nowadays

@0celo7 idk if Geroch counts

he doesn't do research anymore

he retired a while ago

Geroch is a legend.

11:46 PM

He's definitely a legend but

he doesn't do active research or take students

How old is he?

like 74 I think

@ACuriousMind meh

yeah 74

he retired like 5 years ago I think

which sucks

At this point I have no plans to take higher level algebra, unless the QM prof says "no", but he seems quite interested in having a sophomore in his class who's done GR, Yang-Mills, etc.

11:47 PM

because if he was still doing research at Chicago I would've gave the school much more thought

since both Wald and Geroch would be there

@FenderLesPaul Sadly we weren't born in the 50s!

Haha unfortunately yes

we're like those kids on youtube

who complain they were born in the wrong generation for music

@FenderLesPaul How many hours does one usually take in grad school

except for us it's GR

@0celo7 what do you mean?

Credit hours

11:49 PM

oh

How many classes

I think it depends on whether or not you're an experimentalist or theorist

but either way I have no idea

It also depends a lot on the school

One of the grad students in my lab doesn't want to take more than 9

But I want him to take QM with me next semester

good luck

QM is the most boring class ever

@0celo7 Awwww, a lab romance

11:51 PM

@FenderLesPaul I can still ditch QM for...uh...grad level modern algebra?

@0celo7 do QM

Then take the functional analysis based QM in my fourth year?

that actually sounds fun

the functional analysis not the algebra

Assuming Nicoara is teaching it that year

@FenderLesPaul The guy who teaches it is an operator theorist

@0celo7 I guess Bousso also counts as a relativist in the US

although he did some string theory in the past

11:53 PM

He says I wouldn't understand it without more algebra

(and measure theory and topology, but I'm planning to take that already)

@Danu halp I still can't decide Berkeley vs UCSB

why would Danu tell you

which one is closer to LA?

@FenderLesPaul Have you tried the "flip a coin and listen to what your inner voice hopes on which side it will land" method?

@ACuriousMind Huh

Is that how you make all your decisions?

@Slereah I'm going to make a list of GR books now.

ALL of them

@0celo7 When I can't decide by rational reasoning, yes.

11:57 PM

Just type general relativity on amazon I guess?

well, all of the useful ones.

Do not forget the book of the GR Goblin

so GR goblin's book doesn't count, for instance

Also how far does "GR" go

Does quantum gravity qualify

Or QFT on curved spacetime

@Slereah lemme make a preliminary list.

11:59 PM

Or scalar tensor theory

@Slereah wtf is that

Errrr what's it called again

Brans-Dicke